Creep and aging of hard-sphere glasses under constant stress

We investigate the aging behavior of glassy suspensions of nearly hard-sphere colloids submitted to a constant shear stress. For low stresses, below the yield stress, the system is subject to creep motion. As the sample ages, the shear rate exhibits a power-law decrease with time with exponents that depend on the sample age. We use a combination of rheological experiments with time-resolved photon correlation spectroscopy to investigate the time evolution of the sample dynamics under shear on various time and length scales. Long-time light-scattering experiments reveal the occurrence of microscopic rearrangement events that are linked with the macroscopic strain deformation of the sample. Dynamic time sweep experiments indicate that while the internal microscopic dynamics slow down continuously with waiting time, the storage and loss moduli are almost constant after a fast, weak decrease, resembling the behavior of quenched systems with partially frozen-in stresses.